on 9 February 1965 at 9:50 a.m., air France Flight 805 from london landed at orly airport, south ... more on 9 February 1965 at 9:50 a.m., air France Flight 805 from london landed at orly airport, south of Paris. on board was Malcolm X, the african american political activist, who had just spent three days in the United Kingdom at a meeting of the council of african organizations and was scheduled to speak in Paris that evening. he emerged from the plane alone and promptly was met by gendarmes and immigration officers who let him know that his presence in France was 'undesirable' and took him to a small room in the zone de transit. There they held him incommunicado for over an hour, refusing his request to phone the US embassy or contact the people waiting for him in the arrivals hall. once they had checked, listed and copied his passport and papers, they asked him whether he would like to continue on to the next leg of his trip, Geneva, or return to london. not without protest, he chose the second option. They obliged: whisking him out of the room and into a car outside the terminal, making sure that he came into contact with no one, they placed him on board air France Flight 812 to london. only some minutes after he boarded were the other passengers allowed on the plane. at 12:10 p.m., the jet took off; an hour later, Malcolm X was back in london. 1 having dispatched their unwanted visitor back across the english channel, the French authorities turned their attention to the dozen or so people who had been waiting in vain for his arrival. two men introduced themselves as Malcolm X's hosts: lindsay Barrett, a twenty-three-year-old Jamaican national, and carlos Moore, a twenty-two-year-old cuban national. after noting the two men's protestation at Malcolm X's expulsion, as well as copying the details of their documents, the officers followed the waiting party out of the terminal, where they made note of the cars in which the men and women left the airport. They sent this information, including the documents found on Malcolm X, to the police Préfecture in Paris. 2 This unsuccessful visit to France occurred a mere twelve days before Malcolm X (his official name at this time, according to his passport, was Malcolm Shabazz) was murdered by gunmen as he was beginning a speech at the audubon Ballroom in harlem. The proximity between his expulsion from France and his death in new York is one reason why this bureaucratic event at orly has assumed awesome significance in some accounts of the end of Malcolm X's life. 3 an array of explanations, some more sinister than others, have been floated and debated over the years as part of the effort to understand why, in fact, the French authorities would not let him into their country, and what possible chaPter 11 MalcolM X in France, 1964 anti-iMPerialiSM anD the PoliticS oF traVel control in the colD War era Moshik Temkin 9781472571199_txt_rev.indd 219 05/09/14 5:15 PM Decolonization and the Cold War 220
This article analyses the historical conditions for, and implications of, the attitudes and condu... more This article analyses the historical conditions for, and implications of, the attitudes and conduct of a number of prominent or influential public intellectuals in the United States during the Great War. It argues that many intellectuals, particularly those who supported American entry to the war, shared a general lack of concern with the realities of full-scale warfare. Their response to the war had little to do with the war itself – its political and economic causes, brutal and industrial character, and human and material costs. Rather, their positions were often based on their views of culture and philosophy, or on their visions of the post-war world. As a result, relatively few of these intellectuals fully considered the political, social, and economic context in which the catastrophe occurred. The war, to many of them, was primarily a clash of civilizations, a battle of good versus evil, civilized democracy versus barbaric savagery, progress versus backwardness, culture versus kultur. The article describes several manifestations of American intellectual approaches to the war, discusses the correlation between intellectual and general public attitudes, and concludes with some implications for thinking about the relationship between intellectuals and war in more recent American history.
Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, …, Jun 2012
This essay both reviews Manning Marable’s Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention and reflects more broa... more This essay both reviews Manning Marable’s Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention and reflects more broadly upon Malcolm X’s political trajectory and human rights activism in the context of American, African-American, and international history. The essay seeks to analyze the meanings of Malcolm X’s rhetoric, social background, and global ambitions, in particular vis-à-vis the civil rights movement, the geopolitics of the Cold War, and the place of the United States in the wider world. The essay also focuses on the strengths and limitations of Marable’s approach to Malcolm X’s career and on the distinctions between humanizing Malcolm X and historicizing him. The essay concludes with some speculations on the implications that Malcolm X’s life and death might have for understanding public affairs today.
This article seeks to analyse the reception of Robert O. Paxton's now classic "Vichy France: Old ... more This article seeks to analyse the reception of Robert O. Paxton's now classic "Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order" in France and to recreate a sense of the intellectual and cultural moment, as well as the institutional frameworks, in which the French responses were made. Paxton's work, which debunked a number of powerful Gaullist myths, was passionately debated among scholars and intellectuals. Many attacked Paxton for his reliance on nazi archives and for his refusal to accept at face value the integrity of French memoirs, especially his scepticism towards the memories of Résistants. The most combative reactions came from Vichy veterans, Gaullist resisters, and French scholars of the second world war. At the same time, the book was praised by many young intellectuals of the generation of 1968. This article examines "Vichy France" as a historian's critique of 'memory' as a tool for reconstructing history, and the negative reactions to the work as a reflection of the distress of those for whom 'memory' was the best way to understand Vichy. The book's ultimate success suggests a triumph of 'history' over 'memory' in French historical consciousness.
on 9 February 1965 at 9:50 a.m., air France Flight 805 from london landed at orly airport, south ... more on 9 February 1965 at 9:50 a.m., air France Flight 805 from london landed at orly airport, south of Paris. on board was Malcolm X, the african american political activist, who had just spent three days in the United Kingdom at a meeting of the council of african organizations and was scheduled to speak in Paris that evening. he emerged from the plane alone and promptly was met by gendarmes and immigration officers who let him know that his presence in France was 'undesirable' and took him to a small room in the zone de transit. There they held him incommunicado for over an hour, refusing his request to phone the US embassy or contact the people waiting for him in the arrivals hall. once they had checked, listed and copied his passport and papers, they asked him whether he would like to continue on to the next leg of his trip, Geneva, or return to london. not without protest, he chose the second option. They obliged: whisking him out of the room and into a car outside the terminal, making sure that he came into contact with no one, they placed him on board air France Flight 812 to london. only some minutes after he boarded were the other passengers allowed on the plane. at 12:10 p.m., the jet took off; an hour later, Malcolm X was back in london. 1 having dispatched their unwanted visitor back across the english channel, the French authorities turned their attention to the dozen or so people who had been waiting in vain for his arrival. two men introduced themselves as Malcolm X's hosts: lindsay Barrett, a twenty-three-year-old Jamaican national, and carlos Moore, a twenty-two-year-old cuban national. after noting the two men's protestation at Malcolm X's expulsion, as well as copying the details of their documents, the officers followed the waiting party out of the terminal, where they made note of the cars in which the men and women left the airport. They sent this information, including the documents found on Malcolm X, to the police Préfecture in Paris. 2 This unsuccessful visit to France occurred a mere twelve days before Malcolm X (his official name at this time, according to his passport, was Malcolm Shabazz) was murdered by gunmen as he was beginning a speech at the audubon Ballroom in harlem. The proximity between his expulsion from France and his death in new York is one reason why this bureaucratic event at orly has assumed awesome significance in some accounts of the end of Malcolm X's life. 3 an array of explanations, some more sinister than others, have been floated and debated over the years as part of the effort to understand why, in fact, the French authorities would not let him into their country, and what possible chaPter 11 MalcolM X in France, 1964 anti-iMPerialiSM anD the PoliticS oF traVel control in the colD War era Moshik Temkin 9781472571199_txt_rev.indd 219 05/09/14 5:15 PM Decolonization and the Cold War 220
This article analyses the historical conditions for, and implications of, the attitudes and condu... more This article analyses the historical conditions for, and implications of, the attitudes and conduct of a number of prominent or influential public intellectuals in the United States during the Great War. It argues that many intellectuals, particularly those who supported American entry to the war, shared a general lack of concern with the realities of full-scale warfare. Their response to the war had little to do with the war itself – its political and economic causes, brutal and industrial character, and human and material costs. Rather, their positions were often based on their views of culture and philosophy, or on their visions of the post-war world. As a result, relatively few of these intellectuals fully considered the political, social, and economic context in which the catastrophe occurred. The war, to many of them, was primarily a clash of civilizations, a battle of good versus evil, civilized democracy versus barbaric savagery, progress versus backwardness, culture versus kultur. The article describes several manifestations of American intellectual approaches to the war, discusses the correlation between intellectual and general public attitudes, and concludes with some implications for thinking about the relationship between intellectuals and war in more recent American history.
Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, …, Jun 2012
This essay both reviews Manning Marable’s Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention and reflects more broa... more This essay both reviews Manning Marable’s Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention and reflects more broadly upon Malcolm X’s political trajectory and human rights activism in the context of American, African-American, and international history. The essay seeks to analyze the meanings of Malcolm X’s rhetoric, social background, and global ambitions, in particular vis-à-vis the civil rights movement, the geopolitics of the Cold War, and the place of the United States in the wider world. The essay also focuses on the strengths and limitations of Marable’s approach to Malcolm X’s career and on the distinctions between humanizing Malcolm X and historicizing him. The essay concludes with some speculations on the implications that Malcolm X’s life and death might have for understanding public affairs today.
This article seeks to analyse the reception of Robert O. Paxton's now classic "Vichy France: Old ... more This article seeks to analyse the reception of Robert O. Paxton's now classic "Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order" in France and to recreate a sense of the intellectual and cultural moment, as well as the institutional frameworks, in which the French responses were made. Paxton's work, which debunked a number of powerful Gaullist myths, was passionately debated among scholars and intellectuals. Many attacked Paxton for his reliance on nazi archives and for his refusal to accept at face value the integrity of French memoirs, especially his scepticism towards the memories of Résistants. The most combative reactions came from Vichy veterans, Gaullist resisters, and French scholars of the second world war. At the same time, the book was praised by many young intellectuals of the generation of 1968. This article examines "Vichy France" as a historian's critique of 'memory' as a tool for reconstructing history, and the negative reactions to the work as a reflection of the distress of those for whom 'memory' was the best way to understand Vichy. The book's ultimate success suggests a triumph of 'history' over 'memory' in French historical consciousness.
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